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Sixty-seven percent of smartphone users rely on Google Maps to help them get to where they are going quickly and efficiently.
A major of[sic] feature of Google Maps is its ability to predict how long different navigation routes will take. That's possible because the mobile phone of each person using Google Maps sends data about its location and speed back to Google's servers, where it is analyzed to generate new data about traffic conditions.Information like this is useful for navigation. But the exact same data that is used to predict traffic patterns can also be used to predict other kinds of information – information people might not be comfortable with revealing.
For example, data about a mobile phone's past location and movement patterns can be used to predict where a person lives, who their employer is, where they attend religious services and the age range of their children based on where they drop them off for school.
Perhaps we can carefully craft our data patterns to tell advertisers, "Take a hike!"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:49AM
Yep. It never ceases to amaze me how the average public thinks it's impossible. Yet, Topological Data Analysis, Advanced Data Mining, and Game Theory don't give a shit if you don't believe in them. It's kinda like Quantum-anything, in that the average person will never understand the How, but they do see the Result very clearly. While you may still doubt a Quantum based approach to getting an answer, those answers are being provided, and they're matching up with reality in useful ways.
Big Data is the same situation. Crazy fucking huge datasets that no average person would believe could be analyzed to provide anything useful in a viable time frame, continually yield surprisingly accurate predictions about future data. I'm sure AC wants to be secure in the knowledge that Big Corporate cannot predict he will go the grocery store today at 6pm, yet if AC is a normal grid-connected citizen, they're leaking information like a colander holding water. Information like the last time they visited the store, what they bought when they were there, what their IoT fridge says about itself, social media postings consumed about a recipe and then re-shared, last time AC ate anywhere and used an electronic form of payment and/or Instagramm'd their food, cellular GPS information showing typical behavior, which stores next to them are currently open, is their vehicle having issues, the likelihood of going 20 miles out of your way that night so they look at grocery stores where you will be, have you been sick lately, how does the medications you are currently on affect your behavior, etc.
Not only does the average public not know what can be predicted, they also don't know what information is really being stored. That's the real shocker to me. Not what they can predict with advanced tech, but just what the fuck they've been storing on all of us on a daily basis. I fight it hard as hell with Bayesian Poisoning, but realistically I know they can still predict a great deal about me because of how much information is constantly being collected, including my "shadow", or my interference pattern with others.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.